


The Gift of Hope

by roboemma



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-27 00:44:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10798185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roboemma/pseuds/roboemma
Summary: Zeb informs Kallus of a failure of the former imperial agent’s, one that gives the newly-minted Rebel hope he doesn’t deserve (AKA, Kallus finds out about Lira San). (Oneshot. No, it’s not shippy. But it’s heavy.)





	The Gift of Hope

Yavin IV was very different from Atollon. Dense jungle yielded only enough for ancient temples to rise through the trees, and unforgiving vines still insisted on growing over the stone. But the vast stone courtyards worked well as landing pads, and the permanent structures provided cover for the rebels and their supplies, so it was not at all a bad set-up for the recovering Rebellion forces to move into.

Zeb hefted the heavy supply crate to the top of the stack he was building and broke to rest and gaze around the landing pad. It did not look  _ so _ different from Atollon, he decided. Enough familiar ships speckled his view, and the ramshackled way they sorted supplies, set up generators, laid out their quarters, it was all things he recognized. The topography of a rebel base never changed much.

Something new caught his eye as he scanned the pad, something that didn’t fit, and his eyes moved back to the unfamiliar person.  _ Agent Kallus. _ Just Kallus, now. It was still difficult to get used to. For so long, Zeb’s instincts had been trained to think  _ threat _ when he saw the man. But circumstances had changed. Agent Kallus had become Fulcrum, and Fulcrum now became…

Kallus’s once proud, ramrod posture had morphed to something akin to slinking; he moved around the base as though trying to make himself as small as possible, his shoulders wrapped forward and down, hiding his eyes behind his hair, now worn in curtains on the sides of his face. Despite the assurances of other rebels that his presence and assistance was welcome there, despite meeting the many other former imperials like him on Yavin IV, his demeanor, his general sense of not belonging, remained.

Kallus had been more imperial than most, Zeb realized. It was one thing to be a TIE pilot or an engineer on an imperial facility, and it was another thing entirely to be a high ranking officer who had lead forces and advised the likes of Tarkin and Thrawn as Kallus had. Kallus had been a perfect double agent, operating under the rules of the Empire while allying himself with the rebels. He didn’t have to think like a rebel, act like a rebel, work with rebels… and now that he did, he was struggling to adjust to a structure he didn’t understand and would have frustrated someone as strictly trained as the agent.

He may have been a rebel now, but Kallus was still imperial to the core.

Zeb grumbled to himself as he started walking reluctantly but purposefully on an intercept path with the humbled man.

Kallus glanced up when he picked up on Zeb heading in his direction.

“Garazeb,” Kallus greeted with an incline of his head and some pomp.

They had spoken a few times since Thrawn’s attack on Atollon. Some conversations of consequence, others not. There was nothing comfortable about their exchanges. Zeb preferred the backdrop of hungry monsters the moon of Geonosis had provided.

“You keep sneaking around this base, people are going to think you’re guilty of something,” Zeb ribbed him.

Kallus looked immediately rattled; he blanched and visibly flinched.

“I’m not -… I didn’t mean -…” Kallus stumbled.

Ugh, this was worse than before; Zeb only wanted to get him to stop the annoying pouting.

“You’re wound rather tightly, aren’t you?” Zeb rolled his eyes.

***

Kallus clued in to the fact that Garazeb was joking, but the heat around his collar from the initial hot wash of discomfort remained.

“I-… Sorry,” Kallus apologized for his fidgety behavior.

“I sorry?” Garazeb repeated, looking confused and impatient all at once with his fists perched on his hips.

“No-,” Kallus stopped himself there, refusing to continue his babbling. He started over, composing himself and straightening up; the Lasat had commented on his posture. As politely and earnestly as he could, he offered, “I did not mean to appear suspicious. Can I help you with something?”

Garazeb just had a dissatisfied expression on his face, and judged him quietly for a moment.

“You know,” Garazeb growled, dropping his arms at his sides and ceasing his looming, “if you’re going to be a rebel, you should probably start acting like you’re supposed to be here.”

The Lasat turned and started walking for a group of crates at the edge of the platform. Kallus felt as though he was supposed to follow. He fell into stride.

“Could… I ask what you mean?” Kallus inquired gently, testing.

Garazeb scoffed; Kallus felt as though he was very close to mocking his speech next.

“Well,” Garazeb grumbled. “You’ve proven your loyalties. Everyone saw it. What more do you want?”

“I don’t really understand,” Kallus appealed patiently. “I don’t…  _ want _ anything. I’ve been debriefed on every subject I could be so far, and I continue to advise and work wherever I’m needed. If I seem ungrateful, it’s far from the truth.”

This time, the distaste did reach Garazeb’s tone. “You imperial-types are so aggravating…”

“If I’m doing something wrong, if I’m messing up some Rebellion protocol, then just correct me!” Kallus implored.

“That’s not how it works here,  _ Agent _ ,” Garazeb grunted as he hefted a crate from the pile and started back the other way. “There isn’t going to  _ be _ a bunch of rules for you to follow. You have to jump in, get your hands dirty, make some connections.”

“Get my  _ hands dirty? _ ” Kallus exclaimed indignantly, his voice cracking with disbelief. He gave his head a sharp shake where he still sported the ghost of a black eye. He wasn’t angry with the Lasat - he’d never be angry with him again - but to say he was unperturbed would be false.

“Yeah!” Garazeb needled. “You’re a rebel now! You’ve got to start acting like it!” Garazeb dropped the crate on the ground where he was and stopped walking. “Why’re you even here, Kallus? It doesn’t seem to suit you. You tuck your head and try not interact with anyone outside of your duties; if you’ve got nothing to lose here, then what’s to trust?”

Kallus scowled. “You  _ just said _ I’ve proven my loyalty…”

“I just don’t get it!” Garazeb blurted, as close to exasperated as he could sound. “I’m no recruiter! I’m not good with words! I’m not supposed to -… we have a couple of arguments in an ice cave and a creature tries to eat us, and a lifetime of imperial belief just… vanishes?”

“Because I was wrong!” Kallus burst. He’d had no time, no safety, to reflect upon his choices, why his change of heart, when he had still been in the clutches of the imperials. Now he felt the guards crumbling. “On Lasan.” His voice rang with rawness at the mention of the planet. “I have no excuses. I saw, but I was blind, and what I did was evil. I don’t deserve to be forgiven or accepted. All I want, all I deserve, is to spend the rest of my life, however much there is, doing what I can to make up for it… knowing that I never will.”

A half-ring of stacked crates around them created an illusion of privacy, but rebel workers still walked past, and Kallus hoped their exchange was unheard or unnoticed.

Instead of being riled, Garazeb was quiet, like he was somewhere else. Kallus could see something like resignation on Garazeb’s face. Finally, he spoke.

“I’m not the only one,” Garazeb stated plainly and without inflection.

Kallus didn’t understand. He’d caught the change in Garazeb’s tone, but not the meaning of the words.

“What?” he asked.

“You failed,” Garazeb said gruffly. “I’m not the last Lasat. Not even close. There are millions of us.”

For a moment, Kallus felt nothing, interpreted nothing, and then he felt the sounds of the world drain from his ears to an uncomfortable ringing silence.

“What?” he repeated, barely a noise.

Garazeb did not drop his unforgiving matter-of-factness. “There’s another planet. Another home. I saw it. There were millions of us. Not where anyone could ever find it on accident, of course, but… we survived. They are safe. Safe from you. Safe from the Empire, for now.”

Unbidden, and without any warning, Kallus collapsed to his knees sobbing; it hit him out of nowhere and took him to the ground. The tension in his heart, the guilt that threatened to choke him, released its hold for just a moment, and everything he hadn’t allowed himself to feel he felt now like real, physical pain. He had put the vice there before he had ever had the chance to face an ounce of guilt, letting his heart guide him for months when he started feeding the rebels information as Fulcrum. Now it burst in this moment, and he sobbed for the _ relief _ that his greatest military achievement was actually his greatest military failure. He was a fraud. In every sense, he was a fraud. And he’d never felt such relief for it.

Garazeb didn’t allow him long.

“This will never make it right,” he gruffed.

“I know!” Kallus sobbed, his voice pitched. He rocked once on his knees, and swiped his arm over his nose, staining his sleeve with snot and ugly tears, collecting himself only enough to repeat, “I know,” his voice still breaking as he swallowed the words.

There would be no absolving him of his war crimes; Kallus didn’t want that anyways. There was no redemption waiting for him. It didn’t matter. He would work toward a redemption he would never reach, and be so, so grateful in the knowledge that his arrogance, his evil, his failure, could not wipe out the Lasat.

***

Zeb watched Kallus’s raw emotion and palpable relief at the news of Zeb’s people, and felt buried pangs of jealousy that the news had given Kallus more visible solace than himself. Zeb had his own demons to face on his own path back to his culture; the Lasat may have lived on, but everyone Zeb had personally known still laid dead at the hands of the man on the ground before him. The trauma of having felt what it was like to lose one’s entire race was not erased by the fact that it turned out to be untrue. Zeb was a practical man. He’d abandoned spiritualism long ago. He had grieved and moved on; now he had to find a way to undo the process.

Any guilt Kallus felt would never match the pain of Zeb’s actual loss; to even compare the two would be grossly inappropriate. He did not even deserve the comfort Zeb gave him in informing him that not all had been lost. But Zeb was a good man, an honorable man, and plain truths and honest mercies were something still ingrained in him; he wouldn’t deny anyone those, not even a monster, if there was a scrap of hope in them. He had spared Kallus’s life in the ice caves. Now he would spare him his humanity.

No one seemed to take much notice of the crying man and the imposing Lasat as they busied along with their duties around them. In a war like this, it was not so strange of a sight or occurrence. The rebellion was used to working through their pain, of putting themselves between the path of the Empire and the innocents of the galaxy, and proudly standing as equals with their fellow rebel soldiers.

And it was time for Kallus to join them.

“You’re an embarrassment,” Zeb growled, trying to comfort him, and patted him awkwardly on the back. “Pull yourself together, mate. There’s work to be undone.”

Kallus nodded and stood. When he straightened, his shoulders were all the way back, and there was a resolve in his clear, albeit watery eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> There, I made everyone’s favorite shitlord cry. Thanks for reading! I had no idea in Season 1 that I’d ever be interested enough in Zeb and Kallus as characters to make my first ever Rebels fic about them, but this idea hit me on the way to work and I had to write it down. I blame David Oyelowo for being such a talented voice actor that I could easily picture his range accomplishing this. In all seriousness, it’s definitely a challenge to write a fic like this without seeming apologist, given the worldly parallels; I hope I did it justice. I think fans mostly agree that Kallus is a well-written character and like him, but at the same time understand that his actions are unforgivable. Zeb, on the other hand, is a great man, plain and simple, and Kallus is only “redeemed” through the goodness that is Zeb, and I hope the complexity of their relationship came across.


End file.
